Pulled a batch of celery off the dehydrator this morning. Got a batch of onions carmelizing to go into the dehydrator overnight. Tomorrow is running a batch of onions in the smoker before dehydrating :)

I put 3 cookie sheets of blanched green and yellow wax beans in the freezer a couple hours ago. Now I'm off to bag them up with the food saver. I only used about 1/3 of what I picked last evening. I'm taking a big pot of southern green beans to a birthday party on Saturday which will use up another 4 lbs. or so.

16 pints of Red Root Relish

I think I am going to have a bumper crop of horseradish root this year. My two beds grew better than ever and are still mostly lush and green. I won't start digging the roots until after a few decent frosts to kill off the top growth and increase the heat and flavor in the roots. Probably sometime in early to mid November.

My last round (for the season) of Annie's salsa is cooking now. Later today it'll be apple pie jam. I found half pint jars!!! I had to drive half way to Canada to find them, but I found them in a Mennonite grocery store when I was working up North.

Congratulations on the jar find, Boo!

Jack, my horseradish is still big and green and growing, and it's the first year I've ever managed to actually grow it, so it's a new harvest for me, we'll see how it goes. I've kind of been thinking about letting it go over the winter, grow next year and get bigger roots, what do you think?

Here I put 5 pints of various sweet peppers in the freezer and put 63 butternut squash in the pole barn for storage until they go back into the store room.

Annie

Everyone has been busy! Very inspiring to me. I have been working from home since March but lately I have been pretty busy with work so no canning, sadly. But wanted to cheer you all on!

Annie - congrats on the successfully grown horseradish. I remember you saying that you've never had a good crop before. I've always harvested every fall since the first year I started growing HR and always got a decent crop of fairly thick roots. But then my growing season is 6 weeks or so longer than yours. Maybe you can carefully dig around the plants and see what you have under there and harvest a little if it looks to be decent size. You wouldn't have to harvest all of it that way. Some homemade HR sauce with a holiday rib roast is hard to beat.

I always replant within a couple days of harvesting. I cut the top couple inches of the crown off the top of the root and then replant them with the top of the crown about 3-4" deep and then mulch well. They flower the second year if grown from crowns!

I dried a dehydrator load of apple slices. Yum!! There are a lot more apples on the tree in our yard. I hope to be motivated enough to do several more loads in the next few weeks.

Thanks, Jack, I think I'll take your advice and check the roots, since I've never managed to grow horseradish successfully before. This year it's in a raised bed and appears to be very happy there. If the roots are a good size, I'll harvest, if not, they'll wait until next year, I don't have anything else planned for that space anyway.

I'm editing this to add 17 quarts of sauerkraut canned today, and the bucket finally out of my back laundry room.

naturegirl, I haven't even started apples yet but I need to start soon.

Annie

HU from Oklahoma

12 quarts of 100% Concord grape juice

Photo is of the Brianna grapes from 2 weeks ago.

Annie, did you have a hard freeze yet? I see your county has a freeze advisory for tonight. I think we might get missed in the balmy "south" counties.

Naturegirl, we had a frost last week and a harder frost last night. Pretty much everything is gone, and there will be a freeze tonight. Nothing left to do except pick the apples and can some kale...

Annie

Annie - after a few good freezes you can check on the horseradish roots. The freezes draw the remaining nutes from the leaves into the roots and 'sweeten' them. lol

Don't wait for the ground to freeze!

Thanks, Jack, I'll remember that. If they aren't big enough, I'll leave them for next year!

Annie

Nancy RW (zone 7)(7)

Hi all. I know some of you are her friends. . . such sad news. Dawn Coyle died September 30. Her son let us know yesterday.

HU (from the oklahoma garden forum)

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That is so sad Nancy. I used to follow her weekly thread on the Oklahoma forum but couldn't keep up. She was still so young and full of life.

I appreciate you letting us know.

HU from Oklahoma ( In memory of "Dawn")

I did not "know" Dawn, even from the forums, but my sympathies to her family and friends.

Here I'm working on greens, my two bushel baskets full of kale just became 7 quarts of canned greens.

Tomorrow I think I need to start a batch of beef stock.

Annie

Dawn was a saint in the gardening world. And so are "you". Feel privileged .

Please keep canning.

HU from oklahoma

Just checking in... not a lot of canning going on at my home this year... the garden was disappointing... several weeks of smoke filled air along with a brief period of evacuation multiple homes lost in the upper valley but the fire fighters kept it at Bay from us. That said I did put up some tomato juice and today I have a zucchini relish resting over night and will put up a couple batches in the caner tomorrow. It's the one relish that is my go to for everything... and I'm down to my last few jars... Hope the harvest has treated everyone well...

HU from oklahoma

canfan, I'm glad you are safe and still canning.

HU from Oklahoma, you remind me I have to work up my garlic bed one last time, I've got to get it in the ground in the next couple of weeks.

I'm still canning, I had to make room in the freezer for venison, so I dragged out some soup bones and canned 5 quarts and a pint of beef stock. And I still have greens in the garden that need to be in jars!

Editing this to add 7 quarts of collard greens, canned today.

Annie

Yup... safe and sound... The Evans Fire traveled a few miles... finally burned itself out in the steep rugged canyons. I'm finishing up on my 2nd batch of zucchini relish. Should have enough to get through till next year. Contemplating doing up a batch of peppers relish or Cowboy Candy. Have a nice mix to choose from.

Well, I'm sure glad to hear that, it's been a terrible year for the fires. Thank goodness for the fire fighters!

Here I finally started apples, I put 5 gallons of freshly pressed cider in the freezer for the kids, and these 5 quarts went into my kitchen freezer for cooking. I use it to brine pork roasts and I boil some down into apple cider syrup.

Annie

The Sloe gin is done. It’ll improve over the next few weeks.

I have a bunch of frozen mixed berries (strawberries, blackberries, black raspberries, blueberries) that I wanted to pull out of the freezer and make into pie filling. Running out of space and the steer arrives tomorrow. I learned that I don't have to thaw the berries first, but then I realized I don't have a good recipe for mixed berry pie filling... I only have peach and apple recipes. Can someone help? And, if the recipe calls for fresh fruit plus water, do I add the water to the frozen? I'm just confused. Thanks.

I have a bunch of frozen mixed berries (strawberries, blackberries, black raspberries, blueberries) that I wanted to pull out of the freezer and make into pie filling. Running out of freezer space! I learned that I don't have to thaw the berries first, I realized I don't have a good recipe for mixed berry pie filling... I only have peach and apple recipes. Can someone help? And, if the recipe calls for fresh fruit plus water, do I add the water to the frozen? I'm just confused. Thanks.

missemerald, I don't know if these will help, but I scanned recipes for pie fillings in my Ball book of Home Preserving. Notice on the sidebar of the raspberries it says to thaw, drain, measure juice & add water to equal amount called for. I hope you can read these, no time to type everything out.

Yesterday called out for a trip to town to buy a new coffee pot. The old one is still working, but the lid to the pot had a broken spring so the coffee wouldn't drain down into the pot. Had to get feed and scratch for the birds and there is an Aldis on the way to Rural King. Now, I have a hard time going by an Aldis without stopping in and I'm glad I did. They had boxes of beautiful mushrooms on sale again for .99 each so I bought several to dehydrate. They also had a good price on zucchini, so I bought more to make chips like Annie's. I bought fresh ginger from a different store. It has several pieces with buds that I will grow, but would like to make crystallized ginger. Has anyone on here done this? The recipes I found were for candied and didn't offer much of a time for storage. Any advise will be welcome.

Madonna

Madonna - I found this recipe for crystalized ginger. I've never made it myself. I use ginger mostly in Chinese cooking.

I sliced and dehydrated all of the garlic cloves that were rejected for planting. I got about a pint jar of garlic chips which will be stored in the freezer and ground into powder as needed.

Thank you, LoneJack. I'll try that recipe.

Madonna

leah, thank you! I did find this very useful. I managed to create 7 yummy quarts of what I called Razzleberry filling... and a couple of half pints used with homemade yogurt. Next up, blackberry (from frozen) and apple (from fresh). Thanks again!

I just put 9 quart bags of mashed rutabaga in the freezer, and I think I'll make a couple of pies from the last of the apples and freeze them for the holidays.

Jack, I checked my horseradish but the biggest root I could find was about the diameter of a pencil, so I'll leave it grow until next year. I bought a jar at the store today so the babies will have time to grow up!

Annie

I've stored a bunch of rutabaga in bags in an extra fridge. I should consider mashing and freezing them. I also have a bunch of apples around and have just been snacking on them (lots of applesauce and apple butter in jars). Probably time for something sweet again...

I haven't been keeping up on my preservation efforts here, but I'm feeling very good about what's in the pantry and freezer going into a long winter of staying at home.

Liz, I've never frozen rutabaga before, I always canned it, but it does become stronger when canned and mine isn't real mild this year, they were pretty huge. This will be an interesting experiment.

I also have a bunch of apples around, mostly heirlooms like Calville Blanc and Roxberry Russet, Ashmead's Kernel and a few of one of my favorites, Hawaii. There is a small roadside farm market/stand near us and they sell a variety of the old heirlooms, having one or two of about 100 varieties. So I just grab a mixed bag of whatever suits me that are ripe and then experiment.

Anyway, I had a few "baking" apples left, mostly Empire and Northern Spy, so I made a couple of pies for the freezer:

I'm editing this to add today's project, venison sausage. It was windy and snowing, so it was a good day to make sausage. Italian and bratwurst in links and chorizo in bulk, 3 one pound packages of that because we just don't use a lot of chorizo.

Annie

Annie - those sausages and pies look great! No venison for me yet. I only hunted for a couple hours on Saturday and didn't see anything. They only seem to come around when I'm sitting at my kitchen table pecking at the computer like right now. I've seen 3 does and 2 small bucks so far this morning.

I dug my horseradish yesterday. I got 18 lbs. from the two 3x3 beds...by far the best harvest I've ever had with a few roots around 1.5" thick.. I have washed about a third of it so far and will peel it in a bit and process it after that. It sounds like you made the right call on letting yours grow for another year. By the time you peel those pencil thick roots there's not much left.

I got back from our hunting trip to the Ozarks yesterday. We got 3 deer between the 4 of us. We butchered one of them ourselves and had fresh backstraps on the grill for dinner one night. The other 2 we took in for processing into 20 lbs. each of summer sausage and jalapeno/cheddar meat sticks, and 10 lbs. of jerky. We told them to donate anything left over to needy families.

I finished processing my horseradish yesterday. I ended up getting 9 pints total (14 half pint jars and 8 - 4 oz. jars). Way more than we will use in a year so I will have plenty to share with friends and family. I shed some tears during the processing...it is some potent stuff!

Jack, you sure had a successful couple of days, venison and horseradish. A match made in heaven, I think, in spite of your tears! Good to you for the donation too, we mostly donate to my two elderly aunts, who make do on their small Social Security checks and grew up eating whatever anyone could shoot. They like venison and would rather have that than my good grassfed beef, so I share. Garden crops, eggs and venison, and they're eating like the Queens they are, LOL.

I'm still canning, today it was 4 quarts of chicken parts and 7 quarts of chicken stock, I'm trying to make freezer room for beef, which will be slaughtered in a couple of weeks. Thanksgiving dinner will help make some more room, I have an apple pie in there waiting...

Annie

Really? No one else is canning, not even jam for Christmas? I just finished making stock from the carcass of the Thanksgiving turkey, I need to make room for the beef before the end of the month, I canned 2 quarts and a pint. I also made 5 jars of strawberry jam and 6 jars of raspberry jam.

Annie

Annie - no canning for me lately. I do have enough tomatoes to make a batch of salsa this winter unless I use them in Chili or soup. I may also make some beef stock from the 12 lb. rib roast we are having for Christmas dinner. I'd have to freeze it since I don't have a pressure canner yet. Maybe Santa will bring me one!.

I haven't been canning in a while either. No real need to. I've done a couple batches of stuff on the dehydrators lately. Been working on getting the stock stuff that's been piling up in the freezers into actual stocks and demi-glace cubes.

I got our Christmas rib roast out this morning to thaw in the fridge.

This little guy will give us the 2022 Christmas rib roast. He was born 10 days ago. My ranching partner's 3 year old granddaughter named him Speedy Gonzales because he likes to run around, jump, and play. We are expecting 2 more calves in the next few weeks and then 4 more sometime around March over at the other farm.

Sorry about the sideways picture.

Oh Jack, he's so cute! I love those little white faces. He'll grow up to be a big guy, though, and won't be as cute then. I tend to stop thinking they are cute the first time they challenge me, LOL.

We just slaughtered beef on Friday, including one that I had kind of thought of keeping as my herd bull. I decided against that for various reasons and when the man who does my on-farm slaughter was working he asked me if I had tried to castrate that one. I told him that I hadn't, and that the animal was just so calm that I'd considered keeping him for a bull. He told me that I'd made a good decision because that one was sterile, and probably calm because he had no testosterone at all. Ahem. And that would explain why I don't have calves yet, and will have to buy feeders in the spring if I want beef next fall. Good thing I also had a younger back-up, who hopefully did the job. Hay crop was terrible here, and I've reduced my "herd" down to three cows and the old buggy horse, hopefully the cows are bred now for beef in 2022.

Annie

Annie - I'm curious how your processor knew that the bull was sterile. I hope your other bull did the job. Feeders are pretty cheap right now (at least here they are). My partner's son bought 4 more pregnant angus cows a couple months ago plus a feeder and calf both with pink eye and blind. He has those 2 segregated in a small pin.

There are a dozen or so angus bulls in the pasture next to my buddy's pasture and we expect one or more to break into our pasture again next time the cows cycle. It worked out well last year. 4 angus bulls broke in and the ranchers left a young one in our pasture. He stayed in our pasture until this summer when he started to get big and ornery. Now he is in the pasture next door and often hangs out along the adjoining fence line looking at 'his' girlfriends and daughter.

Have you ever fed your herd distillers grain? My partner's son got 2 big bins full for free somewhere local and we've been supplementing the herd with that instead of sweet feed or all stock for the last couple weeks. They seem to really like it...maybe they are getting drunk from it?

LOL, Jack, I don't know if a cow can get drunk, with their various stomachs and digestive system, but that's an interesting thought. I do have a neighbor that gets the spent grains from one of our local small artisan brewers and gives them to his pigs, they apparently love the stuff too.

My cattle get hay and grass, that's all. I started raising grass fed beef after Dad had his heart bypass surgery and was advised to give up the fatty beef. Dad wouldn't stop eating beef, but he did agree to change to grass fed, which made the cardiologist a little bit happier, although not much. Dad's been gone for 12 years now, but I still have his old buggy horse in the pasture with the cattle, and my Morgan saddle horse was too, until he died. Too much grain will cause the horses to founder, and I don't have a way of separating them, so the cows are just out of luck!

As for the sterile bull, Dallas said he had only one testicle and that one was "all shriveled up", the other one was just completely non existent. That's why he thought I'd maybe tried to castrate him and done a bad job. And, yes, Dallas always asks me if I want the "oysters". I've eaten them before, it's like chewing on rubber bands, so I always turn him down but many of his customers do want the testicles. Anyway, it appears that my only hope is riding on the "second string" player. Hopefully, he'll come through for me!

Feeders are pretty cheap here too, but hay is expensive. I should have just about enough to get me through until spring. Any savings I'd realize by buying the cheap feeder calves would be offset by the expensive hay I'd have to buy to feed them! So, I'll hold my cards until spring, and see how things go.

Merry Christmas!

Annie

One of our cows dropped a calf on Christmas day. This is the second year in a row that we had a calf born on Christmas. Last year we joked about naming it Jesus. I guess this year it could be 'the second coming of Jesus'. haha

The first one born a couple weeks ago was a bull and we're pretty sure this one is a heifer because it pees like a girl :-). One more calf yet to be born to a cow that was the first born in our herd about 2.5 years ago. We named her Bones because she has horns.

Almost time to start a new thread, although I probably won't be putting up anything until March when the Mexican asparagus hits the stores.

I did a little New Year's Eve canning this morning. 7 quarts of stock - 3 beef, 3 pork, 1 chicken. With that, my freezer is cleared out of bones unless they're encased in a beautiful piece of meat.

I pulled some frozen strawberry rhubarb pie filling out of the freezer this morning and will make either a pie or some hand pies for dessert tonight. If I'm feeling very ambitious, I may start a ferment - perhaps rutabaga. I devoured the book Fermented Vegetables by Kirsten K. Shockey and Christopher Shockey yesterday, and I'm inspired to try my hand at more interesting ferments. Last month I made a large batch (7 quarts) of kimchi, but the guidance provided in this book makes me think even that will be easier next time.

Liz, you celebrate New Year's Eve like I do, LOL. I also canned beef stock, 4 quarts and a pint, trying to get the freezers cleaned out for the beef that should be ready for pick up next week.

I don't think I'll find time to can anything else in the next hour, so this will probably be it for this thread, it'll be time for someone to start "What did you put up in 2021"!

Happy New Year, everyone.

Annie